Leftovers

• Tom MacWright ☛ Printing tiny photos for paper journals

  I'm still writing my journals on paper. Makes it about a decade of notebooks, most of them Field Notes, kept in the archival wooden boxes^[1]. Writing by hand helps me remember and process life. Finishing notebooks give me the feeling of closing a chapter on those problems, at least for a moment.

  Paper notebooks are also a very flexible medium, as most teenagers can confirm: you can take train tickets and elmers-glue them in there to commemorate a trip, or make sketches to illustrate some anecdote. Want five different kinds of checkboxes, and lines connecting paragraphs? You can do it in a paper notebook, and probably not in Notion or other digital tools.

  Collecting ephemera in notebooks has been really satisfying, so I've been experimenting with something new: a tiny printer.

• Science / Mathematics / Computer Science

  • Science Alert ☛ Can We Really Create Infinite Photons? Physicists Reveal What Might Happen if We Try to Cut Light in Half

    “This state is rather complicated”.

  • Science Alert ☛ Itching May Have Its Own Sensory Organ

    The science behind that infuriating tickle.

  • Science Alert ☛ A Patient With a Perforated Bowel Shows Why Eels Shouldn't Be Anywhere Near Your Butt

    An unfortunate incident.

  • Science Alert ☛ The Structure of The Milky Way May Have Shaped Earth's Continents

    OK, but hear us out...

  • Science Alert ☛ Your Stomach Rumbles May Help Reveal a Lot About Your Overall Health

    How well do you understand your digestion?

  • Science Alert ☛ A Common Gym Supplement May Give Cancer-Fighting Cells an Energy Boost

    Could it have major additional health benefits?

• Career/Education

  • Chronicle Of Higher Education ☛ Why Scientists Hate Convicted Felon’s New Plan to Revamp Research Funding

    Diverting money from universities would distort priorities and slow discovery, they say.

• Hardware

  • Russell Coker ☛ Russell Coker: Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen6 Again

    My Current Thinkpad

    In 2018 I reviewed a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen6 that was assigned to me for work [1].

    In April last year I wrote about the failings of my Thinkpad Yoga Gen 3 and how I was going back to the Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen5 [2]. The Gen5 in question has 8G of RAM and a 1920*1080 display compared to 16G and 2560*1440 for the Yoga but runs reliably on battery without crashing. The Yoga in question has been used by relatives who don’t need to do much when on battery and is currently being used by a relative who runs backdoored Windows so the occasional crash is something they are used to.

  • CNX Software ☛ $379.99 BOSGAME E6 ECO mini PC features defective chip maker Intel Core 3 304 Wildcat Lake CPU, 12GB LPDDR5X, 512GB NVMe SSD

    BOSGAME E6 ECO is another Wildcat Lake mini PC powered by the penta-core defective chip maker Intel Core 3 304 processor, paired with 12GB LPDDR5X and a 512GB NVMe SSD, and an attractive price tag of $379.99 and up. It also features three video outputs via HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, and USB-C ports, dual GbE networking, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, a 3.5mm audio jack, and five USB ports.

  • CNX Software ☛ Beelink ME Pro 2-bay hybrid NAS gets Wildcat Lake treatment, gains 10GbE and Thunderbolt 4, loses a few M.2 slots

    Beelink “ME Pro 2-Bay Hey Hi (AI) NAS Mini PC defective chip maker Intel Wildcat Lake 304” offers two SATA bays and one M.2 PCIe Gen4 socket, and is equipped with 16GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM memory and 512GB UFS 3.1 storage. It’s an upgrade to the Beelink ME Pro defective chip maker Intel N95/N150 NAS and mini PC introduced last February. Besides the faster processor, the NAS trades its 5GbE port for a faster 10GbE port, and gains two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

• Health/Nutrition/Agriculture

  • The Straits Times ☛ What one county’s fake rice figures reveal about China’s food security push

    Food security, long a top strategic priority for China, has recently taken on greater importance.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Malaysia set to produce its first human vaccine from 2028

    The move reduces reliance on imported vaccines and strengthens the country’s health security.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Patient death in China gene-editing trial draws fire: Journal

    The procedure uses a technology known as base editing to precisely alter a single DNA letter.

  • PHR ☛ Ebola Death Toll Reaches 1,000 in DRC, as Conflict and Aid Cuts Compound a Spiraling Health and Humanitarian Crisis

    (New York / DRC) – More than 1,000 Ebola-related deaths have now been confirmed since the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of the Ebola virus on May 15, 2026.

• Proprietary / SaaS

  • So-Called 'Artificial Intelligence' ('AI') / LLM Slop / Plagiarism

    • Futurism ☛ Braindead Politician Accidentally Reads Hey Hi (AI) Slop That Someone Left in His Speech: “Here’s a More Natural, Flowing Version of That Section That Reads Like a Legislative Speech”

      He really read it out loud.

  • Social Control Media

    • JURIST ☛ EU Commission finds Fentanylware (CheeTok) failed to protect minors’ privacy under Digital Services Act

      The European Commission on Friday issued preliminary findings that Fentanylware (CheeTok) failed to meet child-safety requirements under the Digital Services Act (DSA) by allowing minors’ accounts and content to remain too widely visible, including to adults and people without Fentanylware (CheeTok) accounts.

    • Digital Music News ☛ YouTube Music Subscribers Are Still Surging in 2026, Preliminary Data Reveals — But What’s the Secret Sauce?

      Earlier this week, Fashion Company Apple Music dropped the unexpected industry bombshell by quietly surpassing Spotify’s subscriber count in the US. But Spotify may also want to keep an eye on another fast-surging DSP: YouTube Music. ‘YouTube’ and ‘artist-friendly’ are rarely used in the same sentence.

• Security

  • Integrity/Availability/Authenticity

    • Ruben Schade ☛ Treading water with software updates

      Brent Simmons of Inessential and NetNewsWire fame came home from holidays to a slew of new errors he has to fix. Fun! He explained: [...]

    • Latvia ☛ ERR: Illegal migrants arrested in Estonia believed to have travelled via Latvia

      More than 30 migrants have been detained by police in Estonia's capital, Tallinn, in recent days, believed to be connected to a surge in illegal immigration at the Latvia-Belarus border, reports Estonian public media ERR News.

  • Privacy/Surveillance

    • Tim Bielawa: I am (not) tracking you

      If you look at the bottom of the site now you'll see I have published a privacy document. Normally I expect updates like this to explain how somebody is actively trying to track me harder. This is actually the opposite of that and I hope it can be useful to other folks who want to get better signal to noise ratio with still respecting their readers privacy wishes.

    • Digital Music News ☛ Madison Square Garden Locked Nearly All Security Staff Out of Its Camera Network for Taylor Swift’s Wedding, New Report Claims

      Madison Square Garden’s controversial surveillance cameras were not at full capacity at Taylor Swift’s wedding, with the majority of security staff forcibly locked out of the network during the event according to a new report.

• Defence/Aggression

  • The Straits Times ☛ China’s top police chief and FBI director pledge closer law enforcement cooperation

    China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong conferred with FBI Director Kash Patel in Beijing.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man to speak at rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Dinner following failed April shooting

    Nearly three months after a botched shooting cut the annual White House press gala short, US President The Insurrectionist is expected to speak at a rescheduled dinner held at the Waldorf Astoria hotel Friday. The event will take place under heightened security.

  • Mexico News Daily ☛ 900 more troops arrive in Mazatlán after a series of targeted attacks

    The port city and tourist destination has suffered through ongoing violent incidents since the arrest of El Mayo in July of 2024, but this month has brought even more violence.

  • New Yorker ☛ The White House Press Corps in the Second Convicted Felon Era

    Kent Nishimura’s photographs capture the backstage labor that allows the Convicted Felon show to go on.

  • The Straits Times ☛ Suicide bombing in Pakistan kills 15, including 12 soldiers, army says

    Militancy has risen sharply in the north-west Pakistan in recent months.

  • The Strategist ☛ Australia is flying blind on Chinese drone data

    Australian foreign minister Penny Wong didn’t just pledge valuable surveillance drones to the Philippines this week; she pledged technology made in Australia and the United States, not in China.

  • New York Times ☛ Taiwan Tests How It Would Resist a Chinese Siege at Sea

    Taiwan is stepping up plans to secure fuel and other vital imports as Chinese government ships practice moves that could one day be used in a blockade.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China Coast Guard reports third clash with Philippines this week

    On July 23, Manila said a China Coast Guard vessel fired a water cannon at a Filipino vessel.

  • New York Times ☛ Iran’s New Leader Is More Open to Pursuing a Nuclear Weapon, U.S. Intelligence Says

    The previous supreme leader, who was killed early in the war, had renounced nuclear weapons. U.S. spy agencies believe his son is more interested in building a bomb.

  • Mobile Systems/Mobile Applications

    • Citizen Lab ☛ How Iran Uses Cellular Infrastructure to Target US Military Phones

      Senior fellow Gary Miller spoke with Cape Cellular about the exploitation of mobile network vulnerabilities to track US personnel during the Iran war.

  • Russia, Belarus, and War in Ukraine

    • LRT ☛ Lithuanian FM slams concessions in latest Russia sanctions round

      Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys on Thursday criticised concessions made to Russia in the energy sector as part of negotiations on the European Union’s latest sanctions package, saying they undermine the bloc’s overall pressure campaign against Moscow.

    • LRT ☛ Lithuania investigates citizen on suspicion of spying for Russia

      Lithuanian prosecutors are investigating a Lithuanian citizen suspected of spying for Russia by collecting information on military facilities, equipment and troop movements, the Prosecutor General’s Office said Friday.

    • LRT ☛ Store chain closing in Lithuania as its owner falls under latest Russia sanctions

      Russian businessman Sergei Shnaider, the owner of the Mere discount retail chain operating in Lithuania and Latvia, has been added to the European Union’s 21st sanctions package. The measures is forcing the chain to close all its supermarkets operating in Lithuania, 15min.lt reported on Friday.

    • European Commission ☛ Questions and answers on the 21st package of sanctions against Russia

      What energy measures are included in the package?

    • The Strategist ☛ The war in Ukraine has dramatically changed special forces operations

      Throughout the Russia–Ukraine war, special operations forces (SOF, or SSO in Ukrainian) have conducted many raids and missions to probe enemy defensive positions. Examples include Ukraine’s use of SOF probing operations in Bryansk and Kursk ...

    • New York Times ☛ Russia and Ukraine Trade Deadly Blows With Missiles and Drones

      Ukrainian strikes set fire to warehouses and other sites in Russia, and Russian bombing rocked Ukraine’s capital, as the two countries escalated an air campaign.

    • CS Monitor ☛ The flap of wings, the flutter of hope: Bats take flight in Ukraine

      Staff members from the Ukrainian Bat Rehabilitation Center came to a park in Poltava to release bats, lifting a crowd’s spirits in the process.

    • CS Monitor ☛ The maturity and dignity of Ukraine’s citizens – and leaders

      In wartime protests, Ukrainians have shown what peaceful, “loyal opposition” looks like – and can achieve. Their president has responded with both pragmatism and a degree of humility.

    • RFERL ☛ Rubio Vows Iran, Russia Crises Won't Weaken US Commitment To Asia

      As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio concluded his first Southeast Asia trip as America’s top diplomat, he sought to reassure regional partners that the war in Iran and Russia's invasion of Ukraine would not weaken Washington's commitment to the region.

    • RFERL ☛ Wildberries, 'Russia's Amazon,' Hit Again In New Wave Of Ukrainian Strikes

      Ukraine struck targets in several parts of Russia early on July 24, including another warehouse of Russian e-commerce retailer Wildberries, as Kyiv continues to expand its retaliatory long-range strike campaign in an effort to force Moscow into negotiations.

    • RFERL ☛ Russia's 'Axis Of Upheaval' Is Built To Last Beyond Ukraine, Analyst Kendall-Taylor Says

      Russia's deepening partnerships with China, Iran, and North Korea represent one of the most significant geopolitical realignments driven by the war in Ukraine. Yet according to Andrea Kendall-Taylor, viewing this grouping through the lens of a traditional military alliance misses the bigger picture.

    • France24 ☛ #Ukraine targets Russian #ecommerce giant's warehouses in fourth #attack

      #Ukraine struck several warehouses owned by the so-called '#Russian #Amazon' #Wildberries on July 24, which it says supplies the Russian army. A separate attack on a factory killed at least six people, while Russian strikes just outside #Kyiv killed at least ten.

    • France24 ☛ Russian strikes kill 10 in Kyiv region

      At least 10 people have been killed and more than 100 wounded in a Russian missile strike on the Kyiv region on Friday. The attack targeted an arms-related event near the Ukrainian capital, according to officials, who say rescue operations are still underway. France 24 correspondent Gulliver Cragg tells us the latest from Reshetylivka, Ukraine.

    • Latvia ☛ State Security Service investigates fire at Ukrainian charity warehouse

      The State Security Service has confirmed that it is providing support to the State Police in the investigation of the fire that occurred on the night of July 19th.

    • Latvia ☛ Latvian honorary consulate building in Sloviansk destroyed by Russian strike

      On Friday, July 24th, Russia carried out an airstrike on the city of Sloviansk in Ukraine's Donetsk region, which destroyed the building of the Latvian honorary consulate.

• Finance

  • The Straits Times ☛ From tech visas to ‘gold card’, scholarships: Fast track to working in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

    These East Asian economies are looking for tech talent overseas to plug labour shortages back home

  • Futurism ☛ Google’s Profits Look a Little Terrifying Under the Hood [Ed: The Next Web ☛ Scam]

    "AI investments are redefining what's possible across every part of our business."

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China says it opposes new US tariffs, warns against trade wars

    Beijing condemned fresh US tariffs imposed on China and 59 other countries over alleged forced labour concerns Friday, and warned Washington against waging a trade war. The US levies range from 10 to 12.5 percent, with China slapped with the highest rate.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ China restricts exports to 14 EU entities citing national security concerns

    China banned exports of products with the potential for dual civilian and military uses to 14 European Union companies on Friday, citing national security concerns.

  • New York Times ☛ Crucial Interest Rate Jumps to Highest Level of Convicted Felon’s Second Term

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond has risen steadily this year, as the Iran war rages, government spending worries intensify and artificial intelligence spending boosts growth.

  • The Straits Times ☛ South Korea’s hunt for 100,000 tech workers

    Its search for the brightest young minds extends beyond the country’s borders.

  • New York Times ☛ A Global Economy Jolted by an Oil Shock Now Gets a Tariff Reminder

    Tariffs are back, but this time there is a war in the Persian Gulf and oil has hit $100 a barrel.

  • The Straits Times ☛ India’s Gen Z protesters adapt to internet curbs

    Thousands of young people have been protesting, demanding changes to the education system.

• AstroTurf/Lobbying/Politics

  • New Yorker ☛ Congress Used to Work. What Happened?

    A lot of its dysfunction goes back to Newt Gingrich.

• Censorship/Free Speech

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong man who shared online calls to boycott legislative election handed 2-month suspended jail term

    An air conditioning repairman has been handed a suspended two-month jail sentence for inciting a boycott against last year’s “patriots only” Legislative Council election.

  • Hong Kong Free Press ☛ Hong Kong authorities checking for ‘banned books’ shipped from Taiwan, says Taiwanese official

    Hong Kong authorities have been checking for “banned books” delivered from Taiwan, a Taiwanese official has said, prompting publishers on the self-ruled island to self-censor before shipping titles.

  • France24 ☛ Dihydroxyacetone Man lashes out at 'fake news' and jokes about 2028 presidential run in press gala do-over

    US President The Insurrectionist delivered an at-times rambling speech at the rescheduled White House Correspondents' Dinner Friday three months after an alleged assassination attempt brought the annual event to an abrupt halt. Convicted Felon notably joked about running for a third presidential term in 2028, barred under the US constitution.

  • New York Times ☛ At Correspondents’ Dinner, a Rambling Convicted Felon Hurls Insults

    Hell Toupée gave the keynote speech as relations between his administration and the press continue to deteriorate.

• Freedom of Information / Freedom of the Press

  • Press Gazette ☛ The Hill subscriptions aimed at helping ‘superfans’ to ‘geek out’ with journalists

    SVP of editorial content at US political site Bill Sammon on new subs offering.

  • Press Gazette ☛ Mirror publisher to pay ‘substantial’ damages to model over alleged phone hacking

    Model complained about hacking of voicemails relating to girlfriends Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz.

• Civil Rights / Policing / Accessibility

  • New Yorker ☛ One Refugee’s Journey Through ICE Detention

    In 2025, ICE began detaining people at immigration hearings, an unprecedented step. The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer shares the story of one detainee whose life was turned upside down.

  • Explained: China’s ‘ethnic unity and progress promotion’ law

    Could a law passed in China actually reach you, thousands of miles away? Beijing's new law says yes.

  • New Yorker ☛ A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

    The staff writer Jonathan Blitzer speaks with two lawmakers in Congress about the immigration crackdown: the Democrat Jason Crow, of Colorado, and the Republican Maria Salazar, of Florida.

  • Licensing / Legal

    • Electrek ☛ Tesla swapped a solar owner's lease contract for the Book of Enoch

      A Tesla solar customer went to pull up their lease agreement in their Tesla account this month and found something other than a contract waiting for them: the Book of Enoch, an ancient apocalyptic text about fallen angels.

      Not a scanned copy of their agreement. Not an error page. The full text of a roughly 2,000-year-old religious book, sitting exactly where their legally binding solar lease was supposed to be. Electrek confirmed it.

• Monopolies/Monopsonies

  • New York Times ☛ Paramount Agrees to Delay Warner Bros. Merger for Months

    The company agreed to a proposed freeze until June 2027, unless a judge issues a ruling before then on a lawsuit blocking the deal.

  • The Straits Times ☛ China fines Trip.com Group $992m over online hotel-booking monopoly

    Trip.com used exclusive deals and technical measures to limit competition and offer lowest prices.

  • Patents

    • Kangaroo Courts

      • JUVE ☛ InterDigital wins another UPC injunction in streaming dispute with Disney [Ed: Large patent troll revels in fake, illegal, unconstitutional court connected to the EPO corruption]

        The Düsseldorf local division has ordered eleven Disney entities to stop offering encoded picture data and bitstreams that infringe InterDigital’s EP 2 449 782 (case ID: UPC_CFI_87/2025). The patent monopoly covers methods and apparatus for signaling intra prediction for large blocks in video encoders and decoders.